Preferential Publication Bias in Nepal’s Medical Journals

Abstract

AbstractThe article has explored the preferential publication bias of Nepal’s medical journals. To this end, it has reviewed the frequency and proportion of preferential publishing and editorial involvement in endogenous publication practices in six national medical journals registered in the Scopus database system. For the analysis of the data, social network analysis application – VOSviewer for graphical visualisation has been used. Editorial engagement in self-publishing and preferential publishing is found to be common in all journals. The study suggests that as long as the trend of preferential and sequestered publication continues, the integrity and validity generated and disseminated by the journals risks losing trust by the community concerned and the chances of these non-mainstream journals contributing to mainstream journals being slim. And, by way of recommendatory conclusions, it offers the following four questions and areas for further investigation to arrive at the clarity and understanding of some of the issues that have been flagged in the findings and discussions: (a) Why do editors engage in excess self-promotion using the outlet they are supposed to objectively and transparently manage? (b) What is the motivating factor for authors to rely on a particular journal to get published despite having multiple outlets to pick and choose from? (c) Why should the editors and reviewers of scientific contributions maintain the networking silo to include a few in the loop and exclude others from it?